


sure to grow old

by preromantics



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-17
Updated: 2010-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-09 13:04:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson reflects on his relationship with Holmes in bits and pieces. <i>Healthy or sane or not, the pattern is and always will be in place, and that is something Watson recognizes.</i></p><p>Warnings: vague allusions to drug use, adultery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sure to grow old

They have a pattern, a push-pull. Healthy or sane or not, the pattern is and always will be in place, and that is something Watson recognizes.

Watson still comes over when Holmes wants him to; which is certain to be daily, sometimes twice daily, frequently not just twice daily, but for entire days at a time.

After a while, Mary doesn't even seem to mind; she is fond of Sherlock, in the way that everyone comes to be fond of him, in how he's a little bit crazy and far too dependent on everyone but himself, for all his self-serving bravado.

Watson will fall asleep on the worn cushions of the couch in Holmes' study -- ("Our study," Holmes insists, every time, "it's still our house," even though it's not -- Watson and Mary have their own comfortable place, now.

"Doesn't count," Holmes insists, waving his hand vaguely in a way that could mean anything.

As a general rule, Watson only expends half his daily brainpower on puzzling out what Holmes is talking about. Usually it's not worth it; he explains himself in time or forgets about half the the things he goes on about entirely.) -- or Watson will fall asleep in one of the armchairs with his medical journals spread out around him and not wake up until midnight.

Watson knows people talk of him and Holmes, penny novel gossip from the women who never can and never will get Holmes to settle down, the men at the fighting clubs who know about Watson's bets (which he doesn't place anymore, for one to stop Holmes from fighting, and also to stop Holmes from frowning disparagingly at him every time he does it. Come to think of it, Watson does a lot of things for Holmes' sake.)

He knows of the talk, and Holmes also knows in the way he knows everything there is to know. Just the other day Watson had been talking about Middle Eastern acupuncture as medical treatment and Holmes joined in as if he knew everything on the subject, the conversation ending when Watson suddenly found himself halfway convinced that he should allow Holmes to _perform_ acupuncture on him.

Those things tended to happen.

Except, it's nights when Watson has come from seeing Mary to find Holmes has set out a dinner, half-made before he got distracted, and good wine that makes Holmes' hands shake less than they sometimes do.

It's nights when Holmes scrapes his chair all along the floor to sit right next to Watson as they eat, occasionally forgoing a bite of food to instead rub at Watson's neck as Watson tells him about his newest flood of patients.

It's then that Watson doesn't care and maybe cares too much. When he thinks of saying 'yes' when Holmes asks, _Watson won't you stay forever?_

(Which he does ask, usually late at night, usually wrapped around some part of Watson's body, sometimes a little feverish, sometimes sticky, his forehead pressed against Watson's lower back where Holmes has rucked up his shirt just to feel skin.)

There will always be both a sort of ease and tense awareness between he and Holmes, Watson decides.

He pretends it doesn't mean anything when he lets Holmes take his face in both his well-worked hands and pull him forward for a triumphant kiss every time Holmes has a breakthrough of some sort.

That instead of going home to Mary, Watson can prioritize staying home (yes, home -- his original home, the one that after the war will always, somehow, be home, as much as Watson insists to Holmes that it's _not_,) with Holmes. He can let Holmes laugh in his ear and put him down on the cot in the study and peel off his clothes with practiced fingers, sticky with chemicals.

In the morning he rationalizes waking up with Holmes pressed against his side like he's starved for the contact he rarely relinquishes to anyone else but Watson himself, as just being something exclusive to the two of them. It doesn't have to have a further psychological meaning. It's what they do, they take from each other; little things, money and space and bits of skin when it's rough and bits of their hearts when they have to leave.

He feels close to Holmes especially after those mornings in his daily work, bruises pressed into his skin and the knowledge that he knows Holmes in a way no one else ever have or ever will, and yet they are so ultimately doomed to not work together at all.

Sometimes it seems as if Holmes is trying to fix them, to figure them out. (Like together they make a puzzle, a case, an experiment.) Watson will catch Holmes staring at him too hard, too long -- fingering the edge of his coat where it's fraying and asking '_Why hasn't Mary hemmed this?'_ and offering to do it himself, like he could, like he would do all those things for Watson.

(And, in the same way Watson is sure when he comes over and Holmes says no words but to breathe his name and unbutton Watson's coat with some sort of quiet desperation -- Watson knows that Holmes _would_ do all those things and more.)

Holmes won't ever be able to fix them or puzzle them out or solve them, though, of that Watson is sure. They are who they are, existing for their respective professions and also in a multitude of ways existing for each other.

There will be a night, though, Watson knows, where Holmes is laying against his side, and Watson will tell him stories of the world, and Holmes will tell him tales right back and then in the morning they'll find themselves packed up. They will stand side by side in the doorway, looking out at Baker Street and then not looking back, damned the consequences.


End file.
